WPR Music new album of the week: ‘Art Nouveau’

This week’s new classical album comes from Trio Wanderer, one of the leading chamber ensembles in France.

The only chamber ensemble to be named collectively as a Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Trio Wanderer has released critically acclaimed recordings of the complete trios for piano, violin and cello by Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms over the four decades they’ve spent together.

For this album, they’ve turned their attention to the music of their home country.

Titled “Art Nouveau,” the new double album is devoted to music by French composers from around the turn of the twentieth century.

It includes the 1914 “Piano Trio” by Maurice Ravel, a cornerstone of the group’s repertoire, plus the early trio by Claude Debussy and a gripping performance of the “Piano Trio No. 3” by Édouard Lalo, notable for a particularly driving take on the scherzo movement.

The new album also includes two works by Debussy’s contemporary Mélanie Bonis, who released her music under the more ambiguous name Mel Bonis.

Pianist Vincent Coq performs her barcarolle for solo piano, and the trio comes together for “Soir-Matin,” a diptych representing the moods of evening and morning.

But this new album goes beyond piano trios to feature other chamber works by Ravel and Debussy, including Debussy’s late sonata for cello and piano. Featuring cellist Raphaël Pidoux, the work shows the composer moving in an entirely new direction. 

Also notable is the “Sonata for Violin and Cello” by Ravel, where Pidoux and violinist Jean-Marc Phillips-Varjabédian present a spellbinding account of Ravel’s musical elegy for his friend and sometime rival, Debussy.

“Art Nouveau” is available now on the Harmonia Mundi label.